The Feeding Frenzy

So last week, I posted a couple of entries on my blog regarding an approach from a very desirable employer. Somehow, word must have gotten around. On Friday morning, I received six telephone calls from recruiters. Count ’em. SIX.

I often wonder what is behind the sometimes-murky facade of corporate technical recruiting. I imagine that, in that stewing pot of sharks waiting to seize onto candidates and reap big rewards, there exists some kind of “blood in the water” when it’s tough to find qualified candidates.

The fact is, if a week goes by that I don’t get a contact from a recruiter asking if I’m interested in another job, it’s unusual. At least for the past three years. And in most of those cases, I’ve referred the recruiter to friends or former co-workers, and found that those folks are also gainfully employed and pretty satisfied and comfortable in their jobs.

So now that I put a toe in the water with an unrelated company in a totally different geographic area… the sharks caught the scent of blood and circled in.

Then again, perhaps there is a more nefarious cause. I once spoke to a manager who told me that — when he was preparing to lay off or fire a worker — he would contact recruiting agencies on a prospective fire-ee’s behalf in order to drum up contacts for him or her. He considered it good business if he could convince an employee to leave due to a superior offer rather than have to go through the paperwork of laying someone off, along with the requisite hush money (read: “severance pay”) — to stave off potential lawsuits.

I’m not sure whether to be concerned for my current employment, to suspect that recruiters leak contacts to one another, or to simply chalk the event up to coincidence and a candidate’s market in technical recruiting. What do you think? Could there be some other cause?